Prancer
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Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
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Post by Prancer on Aug 1, 2018 4:44:09 GMT
Specifically, I was imagining a fleet of dedicated long-range artillery craft with one giant laser each, together forming a phased array for even better range. The large panel of tiny emitters should work, too, though you are strongly limited in what wavelengths you can generate with it.
This would synergize very, very well with your own standard modules and doctrine, Apophys. The more I think about your doctrine the more it makes sense to me. With the current dynamic of missile vs. laser, it seems inevitable that the main weapons of a fleet would combine the two: a missile that bears a laser as its payload aka. a laser drone. Carriers would just be drone-trucks, their specific characteristics not as important as the munition they deliver, much like how in modern warfare it doesn't matter if an F-16, A-10, or B-1 Lancer is providing CAS, so long as the PGMs are delivered. Now if the munitions are able to fuse their destruction potential together into a weapon with even more potential...there has to be some sort of hard counter out there. Kinetic drones seem to be lacking in potential for a hypothetical arms race.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 31, 2018 20:26:59 GMT
I imagine mutli-ship phased array lasers would then have a limit to how much space they could practically cover in a dynamic battlefield, and as a result how many ships of a certain size could participate. Since light-speed lag would probably mean precise control becomes impractical past a certain distance.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 31, 2018 20:23:23 GMT
In theory, I’d say Spider Silk, UHMWPE fiber, boron filament, liquid crystal polymer fiber, aramid fiber, and PBO fiber are your best bets, with the other fibers being too pricy or dense for the performance.
Spider Silk is cheap, has okay performance, with pretty good mass. I see it as the baseline.
UHMWPE fiber is your choice if mass is your number one concern, but it has the highest price. You get what you pay for though with great performance. It doesn’t have great thermal resistance though.
Boron Filament brings in slightly better than UHMWPE-level performance at a cheaper price than spider silk. It is grouped among the densest of the fibers, however, along with Basalt Fiber, Ceramic Oxide Fiber, and S-glass composite
Liquid Crystal Polymer Fiber is basically Kevlar in liquid crystal form. It is the poor man’s Aramid with a minor drop in price, performance + no longer doubles as anti-laser armor.
Aramid Fiber is your choice if you want to pay 20% more for a fairly equivalent increase in performance + safe use temperature. I’d go with it, since it doubles as laser protection. The price is very high though.
PBO Fiber has okay density, very high price, but amazing tensile strength with low yield strength. This stuff must probably catches spalling like no tomorrow.
As of now, I’m personally testing with Boron Filament and PBO, after using spider silk exclusively for a long time.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 30, 2018 22:20:54 GMT
Large ships may have the benefit of longer-ranged weaponry. But this difference doesn't apply if you are able to make a phased array laser with an armada of small ships (which should be possible, and in a high-tech universe can be safely assumed). Correct me if I'm wrong, but by a phased-array laser with multiple small ships, are you saying that say a four-ship flight of laser ships could somehow merge their lasers together into a single more powerful laser??? I'm guessing that the weapons would have to be purpose-built for this. Would they retain utility as stand-alone laser weapons? How?
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 29, 2018 22:50:28 GMT
Point-defense nuclear missile for nose-cone ship anyone? Like this? www.youtube.com/watch?v=06JUYGA75usUses blast launchers instead of linear induction motors for rapid deployment without drawing power from other defences. Ideally the launchers would be slanted forward; in lieu of this a gun-fired version would probably be worthwhile. That was very nice to watch.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 29, 2018 16:32:46 GMT
For 1. Right click on the name of the game on Steam. Click properties. Under one of the tabs (I'm pretty sure it's local files) there should be a button to "validate game cache". That scans the game files to check if there's any corruption and then downloads any broken files to fix them if applicable. I just did it, and everything is reported to be okay. I think it might be the square brackets, because all the parts that are missing are from Apophys. I'll just have to rename the modules or work with my own. Thanks for the help.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 29, 2018 15:33:49 GMT
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 29, 2018 15:17:43 GMT
If we ever get an option to berth drones and more complex scenarios than "go there, kill stuff" it will have drawbacks. Absolutely. The ability to berth drones is one of the top items on my wishlist. And if there were someway to coordinate attacking flights of drones to split and engage their targets from multiple vectors, I might want to reconsider cylindrical armor. This reminds me of a missile pod concept from the Honorverse series. I'll have to play around with this. Point-defense nuclear missile for nose-cone ship anyone? I've actually done a little bit of that, and alas my first steps away from it is what led to this problem. Every module that I have that is not [AE] is a descendant of stock modules, and I have a small run of pure stock ships. I'll share some of them on the core design thread. Square brackets in mod module names seem to cause issues. I fixed the AE modules by copying them into userdesigns.txt, but I think you can also rename the mod modules with some tag that doesn't contain brackets and fix them. I will try that, thanks!
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 29, 2018 15:08:02 GMT
Have you tried. 1. Verifying the game cache? 2. Unsubscribing from any mods you might have? 1. Could you explain the first step? I am mildly computer illiterate 2. I have no mods.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 29, 2018 4:41:49 GMT
imgur.com/a/PQxFyaDAs the title says. It seems to me that all propulsion modules, radiators, lasers, and gun modules are not saving. As a result, my poor designs end up as mutated corpses. I reconstructed everything and tried again to see if the problem would repeat itself...and it did. I really don't want to have to rebuild everything every time I boot up the game. Shame too because these were designs I was going to share here on the forums for feedback.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 29, 2018 4:37:40 GMT
So I've been working on a carrier design, and I've switched over to using blast launchers to carry my drones on my carriers while using a square high aspect ratio armor scheme for a flat hull shape to also save on mass and volume. The launchers are arranged along each broadside pointed outwards.
This to me seems like a better way of storing drones on a carrier than the carrier modules. Thoughts?
I would post pictures, but my game is currently refusing to save any ships I make uncorrupted...
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 27, 2018 20:27:38 GMT
It's questions like these that make me wish this game modeled sensors. Radar, IR, electro-optical, and ECM. It'd add another dimension to materials used for construction and the shaping of hulls as well.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 27, 2018 20:22:47 GMT
Nah. The last time we tried Casaba howitzers in this game, basically all that happened was the nukes detonated INSIDE the center of mass of a random enemy ship. We don't know where the flak went. As far as I can tell nuke+flak combos don't accelerate the fragments any faster than flak alone, which is disappointing. I've never succeeded at making a working NEFP with a radshield either.
What's worth considering is a mini-orion munition that splits into a nuke and kinetic impactor(s) (solid or frag) that can survive getting propelled by a nuke going off at point-blank range.
I'd love to see testing and results on this concept.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 18, 2018 17:03:00 GMT
Thought I'd try a quick visual exercise in dazzle camouflage. To my knowledge the discerning of an asteroid's shape and features is largely based on the albedo of certain spots and the way these change as it rotates, and for a ship this should also be true since they're both essentially lumps of metal to an observer (protip: spin your ship to look more like a rock). This is more complex with modern detection systems, since you'd need materials that contrast greatly across a wide range of the EM spectrum, but I think enough of these do exist for it to be effective. Remaining unseen will be impossible at a point, but remaining unidentified could go on afterward, which shifts the focus of stealth from disruptive to distractive, making a pattern like this possibly the most costeffective measure at all ranges (so even if the benefit is small the cost is basically nothing anyway). It's a lot more 'digital' looking and lacks definition due to game limitations, but oddly fascinating to look at. Ideally weapons would be painted according to their hull segment's colouration. Radiators appear to be totally impossible to break up (even the non-glowing ones for crew would show up on thermal), but you could attach extension panels to mess with their apparent shape, like this:
That's very interesting, but I don't believe the albedo of a spacecraft would be the primary means of detecting and identifying warships. The radiators, thermal signature coming from the interior of the hull, and the plume signature would be much more significant factors. One would have to address these issues in addition to the scheme you've outlined above.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57
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Post by Prancer on Jul 16, 2018 23:32:30 GMT
I think a common misconception surrounding stealth is that it is a cloak with an on/off switch. That's not what stealth is.
Stealth's job is to make it harder for the enemy to observe you, in order for you to gain an advantage. I think it is more properly termed Low Observability.
Stealth to the degree that we imagine it in mainstream SF, as an invisible ship, I think is an unrealistic expectation or goal. But stealth to the degree that it makes your ships detectable at a lower range than you could detect your enemy? That is probably somewhat doable and possibly even worthwhile. I think we can all agree that we see a wide range of possibilities, with no actual answer to the question.
A stealth ship might thus not be a ghost. But neither would it be "just another ship". Probably significant technology would be invested into the design to reduce its thermal signature, turning it into a valuable asset.
So if stealth ships were to exist, I imagine that they would be a small class of 1-3 capital ships where the investment makes these large and powerful warships more survivable and thus more worthwhile, or possibly a limited flight within a class of smaller destroyer-like ships where the investment of stealth can be utilized to its greatest potential.
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